Ultimate LAN party case

DIY IS THE ULTIMATE EGO TRIP in PC case modding. TweakTown has some of their own DIY work on the site. Andrew has proposed to convert an ordinary flight case into a LAN party carry around thingie. Hacking away bits and screwing everything tightly together, he made himself one helluva LAN Party case. Notice, it’s much lighter than your usual PC case as it's really just the aluminium sidings and the components that count. It's big, sure, but not impossibly heavy to carry... and it's sorta rugged. Wonder if that IKEA cutting board cost much? Read about the DIY, here.

Silent PC Review, one of our fave HTPC computing hardware sites, is testing a NesteQ ECS7001 700W PSU. This PSU lets you lengthen its modular power cables by adding extenders, which may be interesting for those of you who have really big boxes. It also comes with a turboprop... errr... sorry, 2000RPM 120mm fan for cooling the internals on the PSU – something we can only hope *won't* spin at 2000RPM. Good electrics, crap noise levels, thinks Mike. Read about it here.

ThermalTake's Big Typhoon series – or Big Typ as it's been renamed – has reached its next incarnation with the VP version. This cooler includes not one, but two 120mm fans: one for the CPU and another that hangs to the side, over other components like RAM or your capacitors. It doesn't cost much, and it's quite effective. Legion Hardware has it. It's cool.

In Europe at least, Sylvania is a brand of lightbulbs. We see it at department stores and DIY shops all over the place. Well, they've entered the netbook market with the Sylvania g Netbook Meso... yes, from light bulb to light notebook. Laptop Mag dug up their $399 lightweight contender and gave it a spin. Like most netbooks out there, it has some kinks to be worked out, but it comes with Ubuntu's Netbook Remix, which sounds quite OK considering Ubuntu is one of the Linuxy distributions we're most familiar with. Laptop Mag was a bit harsh on the verdict, scoring it a bit low, but if you consider they got three hours and two minutes worth of battery with Wi-Fi on, that's a pretty good value, if you ask us. Get the review here.

PC World – the mag, not the store – has posted an article about five really silly things to do to your computer… and how to do them. Replacing an LCD panel on your laptop, or finely sanding away any imperfections on your CPU's HIS, they've provided a concise guide to doing things you normally wouldn't dare- and voiding your guarantee in the process. Here, if you just have to submit your PC to these cruelties.

NGS doesn't have the street cred that companies like Logitech or Thrustmaster have, but they're slowly building up steam in €uroland through cost-sensitive products. Les Numériques, has a go at their Coupé Racing Steering Wheel which, by the way, works identically well with your PC or Playstations one-thru-three. Get the review here (in French), or here in English.

ClubOC is testing AMD's highest-end CPU, the Phenom X4 9950 - the CPU takes us back to the times of the Pentium 4 where we reached 140W TDPs. Paul (not me), managed to eke out some extra MHz from the CPU, reaching 3GHz, but it's very far from the OC levels on Intel CPUs. Final recommendation: if you want a cheap way to quad core computing, then the 9950 is priced for you. Get it here.